Inside Bridgit Mendler’s New 185,000 sqft Northwood Space Factory

Bridgit Mendler, Co-founder & CEO of Northwood Space, gives Sourcery a first look inside the company’s new 185,000 sqft headquarters and factory in Torrance, California. Northwood has raised over $136M since 2022, including a $100M Series B in January 2026 led by Washington Harbour Partners and co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Founders Fund, 137 Ventures, Alpine Space Ventures, Balerion and Fulcrum participating. The company also signed a $49.8M contract with the US Space Force to support the Satellite Control Network. The new facility will more than 5x Northwood’s manufacturing footprint, support production of hundreds of antennas per year, and add 400 jobs over the next three years as the company works to solve one of the biggest bottlenecks in the space economy: getting data between satellites and Earth. We tour the future manufacturing floor, antenna production lines, machining and PCB assembly areas, anechoic testing chambers, and a former movie theater that Northwood plans to turn into mission operations. The new facility will include dedicated production for Northwood’s Portal phased-array and Prism parabolic systems, while bringing more critical manufacturing and testing in-house. Bridgit also breaks down why ground infrastructure has fallen behind the explosion in satellites, Northwood’s Space Force contract, the economics of satellite connectivity, building a global ground network, supply-chain strategy, national security, and her approach to leadership and scaling Northwood. “If you can improve the networking for the space economy, that is how you translate bits into dollars.” Bridgit Mendler: https://x.com/bridgitmendler Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 YouTube: https://youtu.be/8SGgaMiGv6g 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex https://brex.com/sourcery—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • Applied Aerospace http://applied-ad.com/—As global competition intensifies, strategic leadership demands space and defense technologies that deliver enduring national capabilities. At Applied Aerospace & Defense, we unleash the power of advanced manufacturing with unmatched scale and agility. Visit:https://applied-ad.com https://applied-ad.com/ • Turing https://turing.com/sourcery—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery • VCX https://fundrise.com/vcx—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com http://getvcx.com • Deel https://www.deel.com/sourcery—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery • Public http://public.com/sourcery–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets https://public.com/generated-asset, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc https://www.sourcery.vc/ Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Bridgetten Mendler.

• 0:00Molly O'Shea?

  Bridgetten Mendler.

• 0:01Speaker 02

  Bridgetten Mendler. Bridgetten Mendler.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  This is a 180,000 square feet.

• 0:05Molly O'Shea?

  Damn.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  This is our manufacturing floor. We will have multiple manufacturing lines for our PRISM and PORTAL products. So for both of those, that's going to be hundreds of antennas in production. Space systems were the major focus for a long time and ground segment was kind of the afterthought. And a lot of networking infrastructure hasn't been touched since the 1990s. And so what got us excited was if you could provide that network foundation, think of how many more layers could participate.

• 0:29Molly O'Shea?

  So you've raised over $136 million from Founder Fund, 137 Ventures, Alpine, Washington Harbor. What do you foresee happening in the next 10 years?

• 0:50Molly O'Shea?

  Bridgetten Mendler, thanks for having us at the new HQ. Your old tenants left you a lot of nice little gifts.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Yep, yep. Like if you want kind of hospital aesthetic on your walls, we have a lot of good paintings up for grabs for anyone that wants them.

• 1:04Molly O'Shea?

  But you did make away with like this amazing NASA astronaut statue.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. No, this, uh, this building came with a lot of fun little treasures. There's like a NASA astronaut guy, pool table. So the team is advocating for, for some of the objects around here.

• 1:22Molly O'Shea?

  So this is the year of hundreds for you. You recently had a $100 million announcement back in January, February?

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29Molly O'Shea?

  Um, for a new funding round. This is a 185 square foot facility. How big is this?

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Thousand, yes.

• 1:35Molly O'Shea?

  Okay.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, 180,000 square feet, yeah.

• 1:38Molly O'Shea?

  Damn.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it's designed to support hundreds of antennas in production. So a lot more antennas going to a lot more parts of the world and supporting a lot more space traffic.

• 1:50Molly O'Shea?

  Amazing.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:51Molly O'Shea?

  So I guess for the general audience that does not know what ground stations are, what is the TLDR, the easy kind of?

• 2:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 2:00Molly O'Shea?

  Description?

• 2:01Speaker 00

  So space missions need to send data into space, need to send data back to Earth in order to get any kind of value out of that mission, whether it be, uh, you know, taking pictures of the Earth or communicating, delivering Wi-Fi or cellular connectivity, or supporting more of the space mobility use cases, where you're actually talking about just commanding a spacecraft that's moving around pretty dynamically in space. All of that requires some kind of connectivity back to the ground. And today, the state of that ground infrastructure is really lacking in the capacity and volume that it can support for the future of space missions. And so what we're responding to is a big surge in scale

• 2:44Speaker 00

  that is kind of matching that growth that you see both in launch and in spacecraft manufacturing.

• 2:48Molly O'Shea?

  Why is there such a backlog? Like, like it was pretty obvious how much satellites were going to get built out. So why didn't the US build out ground stations for this?

• 2:58Speaker 00

  I guess it depends on the customer segment. So for, you know, a government customer segment, they tend to procure their spacecraft and their ground systems separately. So space systems were the major focus for a long time. And ground segment was kind of just the afterthought. Like people think about what's the thing that you're putting up in space? And, you know, for a number of programs, the ground was just not really contemplated. And so that, they started running into issues for that. And they were like, oh man, we need to actually account for the ground in our build out so that we can serve that capacity. And then on the, on the commercial operator side, it really is more of like a supply chain issue where you have

• 3:37Speaker 00

  a bunch of different suppliers and then the, the actual operators of those ground sites. And then ultimately the, the software that's stitched on top of that. And for each of those parts of the value chain, it was just really challenging based on that structure to be able to be responsive to increased spacecraft demand. So as a lot of the operators are looking at launching new constellations, there's this moment of, of turnover where you have legacy operators who have their assets that are up in space right now. And they're thinking about, okay, what does our next generation look like so that we can be a part of this new wave of space? You have a whole wave of sovereign operators that are increasing their spacecraft manufacturing. So you have, you know, a lot of the, the bus companies that are serving that.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  And so then the, the ground operations needs to respond in kind, but that value chain is just not really set up to be responsive. And so for us, what we're doing is we're looking across that whole value chain and trying to accomplish it all within one company so that we can actually be responsive to that demand, do it at a better cost, make it more flexible, and just generally modernize.

• 4:45Molly O'Shea?

  So how are you doing full stack ground support?

• 4:49Speaker 00

  It's a lot of disciplines that you tie into one company. So we cover everything from antenna development. We cover a lot of electrical work, a lot of digital signal processing, all within the, the hardware that we build. And then we have a whole sites team. So we actually think about how we manufacture and deploy those antennas. And that incorporates all the way back to the original design principles of what we build. How can we make things that fit in small form factors? And that can, you know, go out and be shipped to any part of the world. And they have to basically, you know, construct really simple versions of sites. So that's a whole different set of discipline. You have to think about how do you operate in different countries?

• 5:34Speaker 00

  So, you know, if you're landing a site in Japan or in Argentina or Iceland, all those wildly different contexts, how can you make sure that that service is like legally operating? And also technically able to, to function in those regions? So there's all those disciplines. And then on top of that, you need to have the software that can tie that all together, both from, you know, a user interface perspective, networking, making the hardware work. So it's a lot of different disciplines that have to come together to make that possible. I think, you know, we really focused on top of the line talent across all of those so that we can execute really effectively and orchestrate it all together, right?

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Because if any one of those pieces doesn't fall in line, then it impacts the overall offering.

• 6:23Molly O'Shea?

  So you have five sites now in 2026. What is it like getting those sites built out? And what kind of regulations do you have to go through?

• 6:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, so like putting together a site, basically you have to, uh, you have to think about just the, the base infrastructure that you need. So connecting to space, you need to have fiber. That means you need to be able to network back through Earth. You need to have power. So how can you actually turn on the devices that you have at site? And then you need to have a plot of land to put things. So we've tried to strip it down to basically just those three things. And so we tend to co-locate with, you know, optimizing for places that already have those things readily available. So data centers, for example, that's a, a spot that's really great for co-location because they already have that infrastructure in place.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  And, uh, and they also have, you know, smart hands, knowledgeable people on site that can fix things up. So that's like the first layer of site sourcing is can you check all, all three of those boxes? Beyond that, you have to think about like what parts of the world do you want to serve for your customer base? And so for, for our customer base, they need to account for kind of global coverage to make sure that their spacecraft can operate, right? So like a satellite, it's, it's moving around the Earth if it's in, um, you know, in orbit lower than geostationary orbit. And so you need to make sure that that spacecraft can always be in contact. It's turned on, it's healthy, it's operating. And then you need to make sure that it can stream data. So where are the users?

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Where are the customers that you want to make contact with? If you're serving customers in the UK, you want to have a location in the UK that you can make contact with. So that's really like the, the triangulation of, of locations. And then the layer on top of that is like, is it a region where you're going to be able to work with the local government? Fortunately for us, the licensing has been relatively easy to work with in the different regions that we focused on because most countries are open for business. You know, like they, they want to have more space business. And so, yeah, once you have the licensing checked off, you have the, um, the site scoped, you know where your customers are, you've got your ground site.

• 8:40Molly O'Shea?

  Fun. Well, I mean, we've definitely seen with the SpaceX IPO, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, they all put out these reports on how amazing and how big the space industry is. So what kind of downstream effects are you seeing from maybe the mainstream on maybe hiring or culture? Just general education and interest on this space?

• 9:01Speaker 00

  I think there's, there's definitely increasing interest externally. And I think from the talent base, there's also just the excitement of, uh... The momentum that it generates with where the industry is going. So I think both from the investor perspective, there's folks considering space as a real business category. And on the talent side, they're seeing it as a place where they can build their career. I think what's interesting, though, with the space economy, right, is like, there's a lot of enthusiasm around the category. But you have to tie that back to business fundamentals. Like, is there a real business that is happening today while we are super excited about that future that the SpaceX IPO painted?

• 9:44Speaker 00

  I think for us as a company, we are, and we have been, you know, since the beginning, very bullish on what kind of data was going to be moving through space. We've been, you know, big believers that more and more markets are going to be using space as the medium for transmitting data. And that has proven out, right? Like, now there's enthusiasm around compute use cases and there's enthusiasm about IOT and other future industries moving to space. But the reality is, that's not space today. That's what we're, you know, building all this infrastructure to be ready for. But today, you need to build off of, like, real businesses that exist. And so I think for us, like, we're a pragmatic business.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Like, we're very excited about the potential of space. We appreciate that there's public sentiment and excitement about space. But we're also, like, making sure that we're building real business today so that we can kind of, you know, rely on our own business going forward.

• 10:43Molly O'Shea?

  What I love about coming and doing these factory tours, even when they're pre-built, is that you can see all the different stations and the people that work at them. And they're all very intentional jobs. They're very clear-cut jobs. They're durable, and you build careers with them and that kind of thing. Whereas, you know, you can go in software companies and everyone kind of looks the same. But everybody at these manufacturing and factory jobs, they all have a role and they're all different. So I guess, like, what kind of, what do you see from your employees about the excitement about those roles and what are you hiring for?

• 11:16Speaker 00

  The excitement of more hardware-based roles? Yeah, I mean, I think there's, there's a lot of excitement around hardware-based roles. And like I mentioned, like, we have a huge variety in the kinds of roles that we're hiring for. So I think folks are seeing, you know, the cool thing about the hardware that we make is it's the intersection of a lot of different disciplines. And so if you have a curious person, they like to know that there's going to be some integration between RF, EE, you know, high-speed data processing, all of that within the same system. So while they're figuring out their piece of the puzzle, they have to actually think about a lot of other disciplines at the same time.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I think, I think if you like hard problems, it's a really juicy place to dig in.

• 12:05Molly O'Shea?

  When we were walking through, like, the main HQ area, there was this really interesting room that you guys are going to build out. So what's going on in that room?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  I mean, part of it is, like, you inherit the building that you have, you know? So like, I mean, I don't know that we would have built out a movie theater ourselves, to be honest. But I think the, the cool thing as a ground company is you do need to have a form of mission ops. And so we are, we're going to be, you know, running mission ops out of what used to be a movie theater. And, yeah, I think that'll be a fun piece of the building to figure out.

• 12:39Molly O'Shea?

  Cool. And you can watch all the launches out of there.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  Exactly. And I think, you know, the thing for, for ground networks is, we're kind of making sure that all of these diverse space missions are staying online. And so being able to have that tracking of those missions staying online is just like a key part of our business. Like, today, we have a bunch of monitors just kind of thrown up in different areas around our existing facility, you know, tracking uptime, tracking other reliability metrics. So we're just going to have to continue to track those metrics. And I think especially for our customer base, like, what we have focused on as a business is the customers that do really care about reliability and they care about, you know, flexibility, being able to allocate capacity where it's needed around the world.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  And so being able to track that and measure that is, is kind of like, cord us doing our job well.

• 13:32Molly O'Shea?

  Northwood recently won a nearly $50 million government contract. What does that contract go towards?

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that contract goes towards a program called the Satellite Control Network, which is basically a, it's a network that is a pool of a bunch of different space missions. So the way that, you know, government has historically thought about how they manage all their spacecraft is they break out the functions. So on what they call the TTNC side, which is making sure that the spacecraft is, you know, moving where it needs to go, it's healthy through all the different stages of its operations, that's Satellite Control Network. And then the actual data for that mission, like, let's say it's an imagery or it's a, you know, a comms in the field use case, that's kind of handled separately. And so the Satellite Control Network side, it's really important for, for two reasons.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  One, because there's just so many more spacecraft launching that they need to make sure that they can be in contact with those spacecraft at all times. But the other piece is those spacecraft are doing different things. Like, you know, I, I heard you talk with the Impulse team, for example. All of those use cases where spacecraft are moving dynamically around in new ways in the space environment, they basically just don't have a solution for how to connect and control that spacecraft. So, you know, when we tie back to how do you succeed at doing your mission? Like, how do you make sure you can actually do things in space? That really ties back to the networking. So that's really what the Satellite Control Network use case is for us.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  And it was kind of the beginning of a partnership with the Space Force in doing that. It's kind of like our trial period. You know, it's, it's us demonstrating our system works. We're able to do all the things that we said we were able to do. And then that's kind of the catalyst for a larger engagement for, for those services. So, you know, I think we're, we're very happy with how that program has progressed, both in terms of, you know, how they've continued to expand and use it, which I probably can't speak too, too much officially to right now. But also, just, I think, you know, we've been able to knock out a number of those milestones,

• 15:47Speaker 00

  which is, is great for, for validating our system.

• 15:51Molly O'Shea?

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• 16:35Molly O'Shea?

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• 17:17Molly O'Shea?

  So there are about 15,000 to 16,000 satellites up in space from LEO to MEO to GEO. There is a, and what is crazy is around, like, 11,000 of those are just Starlink satellites. But there's a component to this, which is national security. There was a viral tweet that went out, and it was completely fake. I tried to tell you about this, and you're like, oh, shit. But there was a viral tweet that went out about hacking Elon's space ground stations and about, you know, the sensitive data and interception there. So how do you think about security and privacy? And I guess, yeah, national security when it comes to ground stations?

• 17:59Molly O'Shea?

  And how are you fortifying on both the physical side of this and then also the software side of this?

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, no, it's a great question. And it's something that we really think about up and down the stack. It's, it's all the way from the networks, the hardware, the software, to make sure that we are making it basically impossible for anyone to write anything to our local systems or to tamper with our hardware at site. I think we've really taken a software-first approach with a lot of the, the security stack. You know, we have conversations with customers who have historically really hardened up each of their individual sites. Think of, like, you know, guards and gates and things like that. We're taking a bit more of this SpaceX approach where they tend towards proliferation.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  So we have a bunch of sites and we have that diversity of sites so that we can make sure if any one of those sites goes down, you know, not necessarily for some kind of malicious reason, but let's say there's like, you know, a crazy hurricane that like wipes out Thera, we can continue to have continuity of coverage. So, yeah, we think about both at a local site level, being able to have basically no intervention possible at site, as well as diversity of sites for being able to, to cover for any site downtime.

• 19:24Molly O'Shea?

  I'm sure this has brought you many crazy places. What is the craziest place that this entire process of building this company has brought you?

• 19:32Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  I guess like the recent one that I went to was Bulgaria for the first time.

• 19:38Molly O'Shea?

  Really?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  That was fun. Yeah, got to hang out with the EnduroSat team, see what they're doing. Like, they're doing such, such great stuff over there. So, really excited for what some of the countries around the world are producing. And I think that was like a real motivating purpose for me with the, this company, is I want to see more space missions be successful and be possible, you know, within the US, but also within our allies, and also across a lot of different commercial operators. So that, you know, right now, we have some really strong frontrunners, and I think they will continue to be leaders. But like, what can we do to make it possible to build an economy?

• 20:21Speaker 00

  And I think that's what I get excited about from the SpaceX IPO, is there's more like general enthusiasm and adoption for that concept of, you know, what the space economy's growth looks like. And so, you know, for me, founding Northwood, we were kind of like looking at the space industry and seeing, okay, there's, you know, development in launch, there's development in spacecraft. But what about the actual economics of space? You need to send data. That is like how you monetize space. How is that networking currently being modernized and resolved? You have, you know, SpaceX, which has totally transformed, you know, not just on the launch side or the spacecraft side, but truly on the, on the networking side as well,

• 21:05Speaker 00

  what they're able to accomplish for sending data through space. I mean, the V3 announcement, right? Like, a terabit per second, per spacecraft. Like, that's incredible that they're able to do that. You know, some of the, like, less remarked upon things are really like on more of the networking side of what they've built, like, you know, the mesh networks that they've supported. That's like really not the paradigm of space today. With space today, you have like much lower throughput. You generally have challenging reliability requirements. And so, like, people tend to solve for that in really expensive ways, like creating a ton of, of diversity of sites and redundancy, which becomes extremely costly. And a lot of networking infrastructure that hasn't been touched since the 1990s.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  And so, what got us excited was if you could provide that network foundation, think of how many more players could participate. And so I think like to date, when we think about the commercial operators that make the most sense to serve, it's those folks that are serving parts of the network where they, they're moving bits and they need to be reliable bits. They need to be, you know, flexible bits. And they also, as a company, need to be able to perform at, at high margin, right? So they need to reduce costs and they need to increase their utilization. So, being able to make more viable businesses through introducing a part of the network, first for us as a starting point is ground. But beyond that, we want to continue to support more and more of the networking piece.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  Being able to introduce like cost savings and reduce the time to delivery is a pretty relevant piece of making those missions successful and possible.

• 22:45Molly O'Shea?

  So you've raised over $136 million from Founder's Fund, 137 Ventures, Alpine, Washington Harbor? They're a huge name, by the way. Like, they're over a lot of these companies down here in El Secundo. But I guess from raising that much capital over time, what do you foresee happening in the next 10 years? Right now, you have 185,000 square foot facility. What does this scale out look like for you and the space industry?

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I think that kind of speaks to what I was saying earlier around, you want to be a very ambitious business and think in the long term about, you know, really, where is the space industry going? And where you envision the set of problems that you can kind of uniquely address and fill. But also, what are the steps to get there, right? Like, I think with investors in space today, and I think it's really the right thing, it's not just about bankrolling a vision that takes 10 years to materialize. It's how can you demonstrate a business year after year that grows? And that actually hits like rather compelling revenue figures along the way?

• 23:55Speaker 00

  And for us too, like, that's, like, I think the investor partners have been phenomenal. And they're leaning in on risk, which is a great compliment to the customers that are really advocating for the demand, right? It's like, it's kind of meeting those in the middle. But we don't, yeah, we just, we don't want to be like externally funded forever. We want to make sure that we can be generating our own revenue with getting there. So, I think like for us in starting Northwood, we recognized that the networking component of space was going to be a huge part of delivering value for the space economy. And really, that there were a lot of problems to solve there. But the most immediate one that would enable missions to get off the ground was on the ground segment.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  So, yeah, that's, that's where we set our focus. And I think, you know, fortunately, that's really proven to be correct. We have really resonated with the Space Force customer that we've talked about and able to meet some of their urgent needs. Like, you know, when we're talking to them on timelines, there's a ton of urgency there to be able to support more spacecraft. And then on the Prism side of our product, being able to support customers that are trying to really increase the throughput and the amount of customers that they can serve, that's been a really great product fit where we found, you know, we're, we're addressing something that is genuinely going to be driving a good amount of revenue for us.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  And so, like, having those foundational pieces then enables us to be more ambitious. You know, it's like, once you have that product foundation that you can build on top of, that creates more compounding, both from a product development standpoint, like, what do we know now from the products that we've built today that gives us the advantage on that next layer of scope that we take on? And then also, what is that kind of build the, the, the past proof points, the legitimacy, the credibility to go to those customers and say, I think we can do more to help you guys do more. So I think that's like what ambition looks like for us. We could have, you know, really lofty expectations for, I think there's, there's a really valuable spot.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  If you can improve the networking for the space economy, that is how you translate bits into dollars. And then for the more immediate term, it's how do you like gradually absorb more and more scope and solve more and more significant problems?

• 26:24Molly O'Shea?

  So what are the main categories of customers that you have on the commercial side?

• 26:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. Largely, I think it comes down to comms, earth observation, customers who their, their ultimate end customer might be like a US government or a sovereign government. And so, like, as I mentioned, on the, on the comms side, for those use cases, you think about, they are, they're monetizing bits and the customers that are buying their bits are the ones that need more reliability and flexibility than maybe like a SpaceX-driven architecture. So, you know, think about a customer where they need to make sure that that amount of throughput is always on. They need to make sure that that amount of throughput is something that they can control.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  They need to make sure that if they have some kind of like bulky, bursty load that they need to send from point A to point B, that they can actually accomplish that. So, you know, it could be anything from like an enterprise that today is using a, a private network, right? Like, there's a ton of businesses that don't use the public internet, but use private networks. That kind of falls into the same category. Or like a, you know, a hospital or something, where they need to make sure that when everybody is watching the World Cup, they can still maintain their connection. So, there's a lot of different use cases, both on the government and commercial side, that require that level of reliability and flexibility. And so, historically, the way that they've solved that from the ground side is a lot of redundancy.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  So, think about like, if you want to be able to surge to support, you know, World Cup scenario. Like, basically, if there's a whole, whole bunch of extra customers in an area, they want to be able to capture that revenue. Maybe the satellite can, but maybe they don't have enough ground support for it. But if they wanted to have that surge capacity, that's going to be really expensive for them to support and maintain all around the year. Or, you know, if they're serving a use case where they can't afford to go down, sometimes they'll have like three times the amount of ground capacity that they would otherwise need to have, just to make sure that in every scenario, it doesn't go down. So, all of that translates to a lot more networking on the ground, which today is super expensive.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  And it is also really long to deliver. And so, both like the cost and the time horizon that they need to address that against, think about like, you know, 18 months in advance, thinking about the ground that they have to provide. If we can condense that time period and condense the cost, that enables them to have a lot more optionality with the customers that they can serve. And also to just have it, have it be like a lower risk endeavor from a cost standpoint.

• 29:07Molly O'Shea?

  As critical national and global infrastructure, what are the biggest challenges that you faced and had to overcome?

• 29:15Speaker 00

  What are the biggest challenges we face as, just like in general?

• 29:18Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, or like building it out, the processes as a growing company?

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think supply chain's one that people mention a lot. And that is definitely the case for us as well. Like, from the get-go, we've been thinking about for supply chain, how can we lean on a kind of supply base that is unconventional to space? We took the philosophy of, let's not buy the aerospace-grade components that are ready off the shelf. Let's just hire incredible engineers that can figure out how to reconfigure a cellular diplexer, you know? And so, that's been successful thus far. We've been able to like actually make space-grade performance out of... Standard, high-volume cellular components. So there's like that, that piece of like just targeting parts of the supply chain that are

• 30:06Speaker 00

  easier to work with. But then there's also, what do you bring in-house, right? Like, a lot of the companies in the area, we've taken that approach as well. I think we try to be like kind of pragmatic with it, where we don't start with doing everything. We only bring in-house what actually turns into a pain point on timeline. So, yeah, at this point, we're, we're doing a fair amount in-house, and we'll continue to do that, which, you know, that means you need to have the best talent that can actually serve a very wide range of functions. You need to be able to actually deliver something that has the performance that you need, but we've been able to do that so far.

• 30:43Molly O'Shea?

  This is a fun question. So this is our Brex question. They're a big partner of sorcery. But Brex is all about performance and spending smarter, moving faster. I always take this on a personal angle for performance, because I think performance is really who you surround yourself with, who you're inspired by, maybe it's a mentor. And so, I'm curious for you, who are those people? Is there anybody that you particularly look up to? Maybe it's Elon, maybe it's Gwen, I don't know.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  I think like it's helpful to have founders that are kind of a step ahead of you, so you can kind of understand what are the problems that are going to be around the corner. Obviously Elon's been like a huge influence for the industry and set a lot of axioms that companies now abide by. One of the ones, I, I do think, you know, Steve Jobs isn't the name that's mentioned as much anymore. Well, I, maybe that's an understatement. But I think like, there's a lot of emphasis on, on the Elon mode, which I think is true. But also I think like, the things that I really relate to, in, or that I admire and like, seek to glean from, more of like the, the Steve Jobs mode of operating is just

• 31:51Speaker 00

  like, the obsession with craft and perfection. And I think like, that's definitely, you know, in the Elon mode as well, but maybe it's like, maybe I'm just connecting to more of the like artistic aspect of it in the, in the Steve Jobs way, because I very much am a perfectionist, and like, I wrestle with that sometimes, because sometimes things just need to get shipped and be done. But I think there's also like a lot of value in just being maniacal on craft and quality. And so I think knowing when to apply each of those is really important.

• 32:24Molly O'Shea?

  What was the biggest surprise that you've had, growing as a leader or CEO in this space?

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Um, I guess maybe just like the, the trusting your gut bit of it. I tend to be the type of person that likes to triple-check everything, to that kind of perfectionist thing. And so, I think being more comfortable with making more gut calls and being like, I'm here for a reason, you know? Like, I've made enough good judgment calls along the way to, to be here. And so, sometimes those gut calls are actually the right one off the first, first go.

• 33:02Molly O'Shea?

  What are the biggest misconceptions with ground stations? Why aren't you building a very large parabolic dish?

• 33:07Speaker 00

  The reason why we've chosen the architecture we've chosen is all about scale and flexibility. So, we want to be able to produce a lot of units, and we want to make them able to do a lot of things for a wide variety of missions, right? Like, we're not just serving one customer. We want to, basically like be an index for space, where whatever use case winds up panning out for a space, we're able to support it. And so that's like a, a pretty unique design factor for us. If we were trying to build the Stanford dish, and the Stanford dish alone, we'd build a giant parabolic that, you know, only sits in one place and does one thing. But if we want to accomplish serving the Stanford dish, while serving a lot of other

• 33:50Speaker 00

  things, we probably would build something that's more modular, that could add up in the sum of its parts, to the kind of performance that's required for that operation. But in the meantime, you can use it for a bunch of other things. Yeah, and that's kind of like the, the economical model we have in mind.

• 34:06Molly O'Shea?

  This is a random question, but, do you have a favorite sci-fi movie? Like, every, every single space or factory tour we've gone on, they're kind of obsessed with sci-fi.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, we are going through the Star Wars series with my boys. So trying to like indoctrinate them early, and they're, they're so in on it, so that's great. But, I actually, like, my, my favorite sci-fi book, which I actually don't know if they've made it into a movie, and I think they should, is Sphere by Michael Crichton. And, I'm actually getting like somebody else to read it right now, and I'm trying to read it with them as well, but it's, I don't want to spoil the plot, but it's basically like an underwater UFO situation.

• 34:51Molly O'Shea?

  Ooh.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  I highly recommend it.

• 34:53Molly O'Shea?

  Do you believe in underwater UFOs?

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Um, well, like, it didn't, it didn't come about from underwater, like, it landed there. I, I hope I'm not giving away spoilers. But, but do I believe in UFOs? I mean, statistically, I kind of have like the boring answer, but just like statistically, yes, I feel like there is other life out there. And it's just, you know, a matter of probabilities that will eventually collide with us in some, in some form.

• 35:25Molly O'Shea?

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• 36:10Molly O'Shea?

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• 36:52Molly O'Shea?

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• 37:21Speaker 00

  This is our manufacturing floor, and, nothing in here today, yet, aside from the, the old paintings over there. But, what we will have is multiple manufacturing lines for our Prism and Portal products. So for both of those, that's going to be hundreds of antennas in production, what do you need to have? You need to have a lot of inventory, so there'll be sections for us, really just like storing the components, making sure that we can have that on hand. There's also going to be, a bunch of the different actual fabrication stations and build stations that we have. We'll have testing stations. So yeah, the, the floor plan's going to get occupied pretty quick with all that.

• 38:03Molly O'Shea?

  This is huge. So, as you build this out, there's obviously a lot going on behind us, which will be inventory, antennas, that kind of thing. What is going on over here? Because these are really interesting, huge bays.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So like, when you're scaling up production, you have to think about a couple of different pieces together. You have to think about, how do you have a resilient supply chain strategy? So that does factor into more of the infrastr, the inventory supply. You have to think about, how do you actually have the production line space to be able to, to have all of those units run through their assembly process? You also have to think about, what is the testing apparatuses for them? And then, there are going to be things that we're sourcing in from inventory, but there's also going to be things that we're building ourselves in-house. So, we have things come through shipping and receiving over here. We're going to have our antenna production lines running here for multiple product lines, so kind of running in parallel, side by side.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  In this back corner over here, you can actually start to see, that's our anechoic chamber starting to get stood up. So yeah, we're going to have our chambers over here for testing. So, when you're building out antennas, you need to do a couple of different testing processes. You need to do the, the anechoic chamber, for example, where you test the signals on the antenna to make sure that it can operate as, as it's expected, and so...

• 39:26Molly O'Shea?

  For people who don't know what an anechoic chamber is, can you explain that?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  A lot of blue spiky foam, that looks really cool, and it just protects all the integrity of the signals, because, believe it or not, like where we're standing right now, has a bunch of different signals and noise interfering, so it basically creates a very isolated environment, where you can just like focus on, on the performance of that antenna. And so then, back to what you were asking, over here, we're going to have a lot of that inventory supply, and we're also going to have our machining shops. And so those are going to be for the components that we're actually building in-house. So, when we are building out different antenna feeds, for example, like, we will build an all-new antenna feed that we then test in the chamber to validate its performance.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  We're going to be doing PCB assembly as well, basically bringing in all the different parts of the supply chain that are kind of, you know, imposing timeline restrictions and things like that. And we're going to put them here at Northwood, so that we can control it, test it, and then assemble it all together.

• 40:31Molly O'Shea?

  Cool. Should we walk over there and just kind of show?

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:35Molly O'Shea?

  Okay, so, we're inside the building. This is all going to get built out.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Correct. So a lot of this is going to be office space, but the building came with some, kind of...

• 40:44Molly O'Shea?

  I think the movie theater was in here, right?

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Did I pass it? Oh, it is right here, okay.

• 40:48Molly O'Shea?

  It is in here.

• 40:52Speaker 00

  Oh, on air. It'll always be on air. Exactly.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  So, um, Molly's recommendation, and I think this is correct, is this screen is too small.

• 41:05Molly O'Shea?

  Screen's too small. Look at the screen.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  It's true. Like, if you have so many nice chairs, lounge chairs, um, might as well just have floor-to-ceiling, or even ceiling included, screens. Just screens everywhere. Um, really, like, simulating satellites overhead, right? You could just, like, have them all flowing around.

• 41:26Molly O'Shea?

  Well, did you see, um, I just, I'm really late to watching this movie, but I just saw Project Hail Mary.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh, yeah.

• 41:33Molly O'Shea?

  They have one room where it's like a 360 kind of screen. So you could make this whole room.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  For real, yeah, that's right. You could.

• 41:42Molly O'Shea?

  And simulate...

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Being a ground station.

• 41:44Molly O'Shea?

  Being a ground station.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  If you want to get the vibe for what it feels like to be a ground station, this is where we could take people. And they could just, you know, get the whole emotional experience of being a ground station. But, yeah, I think that's pretty fun, putting the screens everywhere. So, yeah, I actually have no idea why they had a movie theater here, because, you know, they were doing, like, automotive production and stuff. So maybe it was just some guy who wanted to have a, uh...

• 42:12Molly O'Shea?

  He could have inbuilt a man's den.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 42:15Molly O'Shea?

  At home, so he did it here.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  There's also this interesting, like, window back here, which I don't know...

• 42:22Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, gosh.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  ...what it goes to. It's covered in foam.

• 42:26Molly O'Shea?

  Oh.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  There's actually...

• 42:29Speaker 00

  It goes this way. But, yeah, so there's a room behind the screen if you want to spy on what's going on in here.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  A lot of possibilities, a lot of possibilities of what we designed for here. And a bucket, so if anyone wants to... If you want to take home a bucket, I don't think anyone's going to claim it at this point.

• 42:50Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my god. Okay, so maybe we'll see the lobby, see the astronaut.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Sounds great.

• 42:56Molly O'Shea?

  Awesome.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Watch it from back, and it'll be totally different vibe.

• 43:02Molly O'Shea?

  Completely built out. I mean, it's really cool to see how raw the manufacturing facility is, and then you come in here and it's just a full-on office. Like, it's a nice office, it's built out. It'll obviously be cleaned and that kind of thing, but like, this is an amazing entrance.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, yeah, so this is like coming into Northwood. We saw the manufacturing floor side where we're going to be cranking out the antennas.

• 43:27Molly O'Shea?

  You can see the smokestacks of El Segundo.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Exactly. So you know where you are, coming off the freeway, seeing the big ol' Northwood logo, El Segundo smokestacks, echoing lobby, and then, um, yeah, and then you come inside. So, we're trying to account for a bunch of people on the manufacturing floor, as well as, like I mentioned, there's a lot of other disciplines that work at Northwood. So, it's the regulatory side, it's the, um, it's the site build-out side, it's the software team, a lot of different teams that actually, um, are not on the manufacturing floor as well. But we all get to be together and then, you know, get the benefit of working close by.

• 44:12Molly O'Shea?

  I got the squeaky shoes.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  I like the sunlight.

• 44:15Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, this is really pretty.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:17Molly O'Shea?

  Maybe look at that.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  It's kind of dramatic.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  So if you ever want to, you know, intimidate one of your guests, you just, like, walk down this staircase on the way in. It actually kind of reminds me of, like, that Titanic scene.

• 44:31Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, gosh. I mean, hopefully not...

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:36Molly O'Shea?

  ...in a scary way.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Um, and then, yeah, they gave us a pool table, so my son has enjoyed that. Um, and then, yeah, this was another one of the fun things.

• 44:50Molly O'Shea?

  This is the most fun thing. I thought this was awesome.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Just strike a pose with a NASA guy.

• 44:55Molly O'Shea?

  I think we should put this near the entrance.

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah. Hold hands.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Um... So, yeah, that's our, that's our other gift from, um, I mean, again, they had nothing to do with space, but they left us a NASA astronaut, so...

• 45:14Molly O'Shea?

  Everyone loves space.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Everybody loves space, it's true.

• 45:16Molly O'Shea?

  Hopefully there's no one inside of that.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  That's, that would be terrifying. Um, yeah, you know, like, everybody has the Lego rocket ship thing. Everybody loves space.

• 45:27Molly O'Shea?

  Well, Bridget, thank you for taking us around Northwood. I know it got a little bit silly, but can't tempt me with a scooter.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  That's how I like my interviews, you know? I just, like, bombarded you with ground station information. I had to treat you to a little...

• 45:41Molly O'Shea?

  I got distracted.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  ...ride after that.

• 45:43Molly O'Shea?

  Well, thank you so much. I'm so excited for the build-out, and we'll be back here in a week to see everybody working.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. All right, thanks for coming by.

• 45:51Molly O'Shea?

  Cool. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once-a-week top deals and tech headlines email, and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up.